Corruption is a central issue in international development. However, due to its secrecy nature, it has been difficult to find hard data and do micro-empirical research about corruption. Empirical researchers have been creative in searching for ways to get hard data on corruption. These include firms’ surveys, auditing financial documents, inspecting quality of public projects and comparing prices.

In this project I use another approach to get hard data on corruption. During my recent fieldwork in an Asian country, I interviewed many people who directly involved in the corruption activities. I found that bribe-takers are generally not willing to talk about the issue, but to the contrary, many bribe-givers are open to discuss it. Bribe-givers fall into two categories: individuals and firms. Each individual usually knows only a few personal corruption cases. Each firms, however, often keeps records or many corrupt transactions. In a corrupt environment, firms usually keep two accounting books: one cooked book to report to the authority and one real book to keep track of their finances. Several firms that I know are willing to give access to their real books for a research purpose.

Their information would shed some light on the following important questions/hypotheses in the literature. First, it provides a rich and detailed picture of corruption activities: the lobbying process by local authorities for funding and projects’ allocation from the national budget, the connections, influences, trust, selection of supplier-bribers, the corrupt bidding process and negotiation for bribery. Second, it helps to estimate the level of corruption (measured by the ratio of the bribe over the value of the projects) by different types of buying organizations (such as government agencies, the armed forces, public services, private firms and foreign firms). Finally, it let us know whether fiscal decentralization can lead to less or more corruption. By comparing the bribery levels taken by different levels of government, this datasets may provide some evidence on this question.

"The Economic Impact of Armed Groups"
Oeindrila Dube, Fellow, Center for International Development, and Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

This research seeks to understand how armed non-state actors affect economic activity. Specifically, I assess how the spread of armed groups affect firm investment in Colombia, a country that has been amidst a low intensity conflict over the past four decades.

From a theoretical perspective, the effect of armed groups can go in either direction. On the one hand, armed actors may tax economic activity by escalating conflict and generating uncertainty regarding the business environment. On the other hand, armed actors may promote economic activity by providing security or enforcing property rights, where the state does not provide these services as public goods. To date, there has been little empirical evidence on the net economic impact of these two effects.

This project aims to provide evidence on this question by employing a sub-national analysis of Colombia. Specifically, I assess how the entry of paramilitary groups into a region affect investment at the firm and plant level. It is challenging to identify this effect given the potential endogeneity of paramilitary presence. For example, if armed groups target regions in economic decline, this would lead to an overestimate of the extent to which they reduce investment. To address this challenge, I exploit a major radial expansion of paramilitary groups from the Northern city of Monteria during the 1990s to instrument for paramilitary entry across regions of Colombia.

This study will utilize a unique new dataset on civil war violence which records the incidence of paramilitary violence in over 900 Colombian municipalities, over 1996 to 2005. To identify the effect on investment, the conflict data will be matched to panel data on over 10,000 firms across various sectors and to a panel of 7,000 plants in the manufacturing sector. This will enable analysis of how paramilitary entry affects various aspects of firm activity, including investment in fixed assets and plant death.

"How Much Do Universities Add to the Skills of Colombian Workers?"
Juan E. Saavedra, Doctoral Candidate, Wiener Center for Inequality and Social Policy and Graduate Associate, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University

Intra and international wage inequality has increased substantially since the 1980’s along three distinct margins: education, occupation, and among workers with similar education and labor market credentials. Wage disparities in Colombia have mirrored the global trends. For example, from 1982 to 2000, the hourly wage of Colombian college educated workers rose by 62% relative to those with only high school diploma. During the same period, the labor market return for college graduates doubled, from 9% to 18%, while the return to workers with only high school remained fairly flat at approximately 8%. While there is mounting evidence on the importance of financial aid on college decisions like entry and completion, far less is known about the role of colleges in skill acquisition and subsequent labor market prospects.

This study investigates the causes of students’ differential skill-acquisition in Colombian tertiary education and the nature of subsequent wage inequality. I employ a supply-demand framework in which: i) heterogeneity in college quality produces differences in skill-acquisition (supply), and; ii) labor market forces reward skills that complement technological innovations (demand). Using college entrance and exit exam score data, I introduce a new college quality metric that is chiefly student-achievement based. I apply this metric to: i) estimate production functions that link college value-added to observable college and program-of-study inputs, and; ii) test the relative importance of supply and demand factors in explaining wage inequality among recent college graduates. To measure the returns to skill acquisition and college quality, I use confidential labor data from Ministerio de Educación’s Observatorio Laboral. The study helps understand the process of human capital acquisition, and the determinants and rewards to college quality. The methodology and results also constitute the basis for a transition from a Colombian college quality assurance system that is exclusively input-based to one primarily centered on student achievement-based outputs.

Corruption is a leading constraint on redistributive
policy in developing countries; recent studies have found that as much as 80% of
resources targeted to poor communities are stolen along the way. In India,
where our study is set, this problem is particularly acute as it restricts
the government's ability to spread the benefits of rapid growth within
narrow sections of the economy. Little is known, however, about the behavior
of corrupt officials.

Our project aims to measure the choices of corrupt
officials who have access to multiple opportunities for theft. Our context
is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which guarantees 100
days of paid employment to every household in rural India. Preliminary
fieldwork in the state of Orissa, as well as the results of scattered
small-scale surveys by NGOs, revealed that corruption is rampant and that it
takes two forms. Officials can over-report the number of days worked on
their projects (which amounts to theft from taxpayers) or underpay their
workers (which is theft from the beneficiaries). Many officials also have
jurisdiction over multiple projects and can choose how much to steal from
each.

Because the NREGA's transparency measures require that
program micro-data be made available online, we have full access to the official
records. We plan to complement these with an original survey of
beneficiaries, which will allow us to measure both kinds of theft. We will
then measure how theft responded to several large exogenous changes in
program benefits. We can further exploit differences across projects (some
of which pay wages and some piece rates) and across state borders to
construct credible estimates of the effects of these shocks on different
forms of corruption. The results will be practically useful for optimizing
NREGA parameters and also shed light on deeper questions about the
motivations of petty bureaucrats.

"What Determines the Demand for Preventive Care?"Alison Comfort, Doctoral Candidate, Health Policy, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

The WHO considers iron-deficiency to be the leading nutritional problem in the world. Up to 80% of the world’s population is iron-deficient and 20% is anemic. The majority of those affected are women and children in developing countries. Anemia and iron-deficiency have serious health consequences including maternal deaths during deliveries. Women who are anemic also tend to give birth to premature babies or low-birth-weight infants who suffer from infections, weakened immunity, learning disabilities, impaired physical development and, in severe cases, death. The UN has set as a goal to reduce anemia by two-thirds by 2010.

Anemia and iron-deficiency can be prevented during pregnancy through the daily consumption of iron supplements. In many developing countries, these pills are provided for free at public health centers. Yet, there is very low uptake.

My research study seeks to investigate the reasons why pregnant women in developing countries are not consuming the recommended dose of iron pills, as a way to understand low demand for preventive care. The study will use as its sample population micro-lending clients in Karnataka, India who are participating in a randomized experiment that offers health insurance for catastrophic health events.

The study will include both survey questions and an experiment to disentangle the various factors that might explain low demand for iron supplements. Such factors include indirect costs like the opportunity cost of time to obtain supplements, travel, wait time, and availability of supplements. Particularly in developing countries, absenteeism of providers and shortages of drug supplies can significantly increase the costs to obtain care.

The survey and experiment will also determine whether behavioral responses can explain low demand for preventive care. It is possible that the women are engaging in hyperbolic discounting, meaning that they may want to use preventive care but they will always prefer to delay the costs till a future date. This type of behavior could entail policy implications such as paying women to take these supplements, since they may never choose to demand them on their own. By understanding the reasons for which demand of preventive care is so low, policies can be better formulated to target these constraints and promote better health outcomes.

"Determinants
and Impacts of Saving for Low Income Microcredit Clients in Chile"Felipe Kast, Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government and Dina Pomeranz,
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Economics, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Income fluctuations of the poorest populations in many developing countries are high. Nevertheless, we observe low savings rates or buffer stocks among these populations. 75% of Chilean workers in the lowest income quintile say they do not have any savings. This reduces their possibility of smoothing consumption in times of negative income or expenditure shocks, and of saving up for bulky investments or household expenditures.

The aim of this project is threefold: To shed light on mechanisms that can affect micro-savings, to measure the effect of micro-savings on amount and forms of overall savings of participants, and to evaluate the impact of having access to a micro-savings opportunity on behavior and wellbeing of participants.

Following a series of extensive focus groups, the project will be conducted through a randomized evaluation in collaboration with a large microfinance institution (MFI) in Chile. Current clients of the MFI receive micro-credit combined with trainings on business skills. This project will evaluate the introduction of a new option to deposit savings with the MFI, in addition to weekly the repayments of their loan. We are aiming to evaluate factors affecting take-up and savings rates in these new savings accounts, the extent of crowding-out of other forms of savings, and the impact of access to this form of micro-savings on mental wellbeing and worry about financial concerns, informal insurance networks, as well as business activities such as investment decision in clients’ micro-enterprises.

"Improving Quality: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Relationships Between In-Service Teacher Training, Learner-Centered Pedagogy, and Student Achievement"Benjamin Piper, Doctoral Candidate, International Education, Graduate
School of Education

Teacher training is an increasingly preferred remedy for low teacher quality and dismal student achievement in Sub-Saharan Africa. In-service teacher education and training (INSET) programs take place after teachers have begun their teaching careers and are regarded as an efficient way to impact large numbers of teachers in short periods of time. As a result, these programs have become an increasingly popular educational reform throughout Sub-Saharan Africa after the 1990 Education for All conference in Jomtien, Thailand, where the international community promised to provide access to quality education for all by 2000. This target remains distant. For example, primary and secondary enrollments in Ethiopia stand at 42% and 16% respectively. Those students fortunate enough to enroll receive low-quality education: teacher-student ratios in Ethiopia are 72:1 and teachers have little formal education and very low-quality pre-service teacher preparation. These quality issues are the
raison d’etre for dozens of new INSET programs in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the form and content of these INSET programs differ, they often use active learning methods, locally relevant materials, and employ group work -- both in the training itself and the pedagogy they foster. In Sub-Saharan Africa, such programs are referred to as “learner-centered.”

My study employs a mixed-methods approach to examine an Ethiopian INSET program, and I will evaluate first whether the program increases the use of learner-centered pedagogy, and, second, whether this new pedagogy increases student achievement. It is not clear, from empirical research, whether INSET programs in Sub-Saharan Africa actually increase learner-centered pedagogy, and whether that changed pedagogy improves student achievement. Nor do we know whether program effects differ by program duration, by the passage of time from program completion, and by teacher experience and qualifications. This project will attempt to answer those questions using a unique mixed-methods design, nationally representative student achievement data, and close inspection of teacher pedagogy in primary classrooms.

"A Method for Rapid Participatory Land Use and Habitation Planning
Using Information and Geospatial Technologies:The Case of the Osa Region of Costa Rica" Juan Carlos Vargas-Moreno, Doctoral Candidate,
Graduate School of Design

This research explores alternative methodologies to conduct Rapid Participatory Landscape Planning in regions of the world challenged by rapid land use and habitation changes occurring at unprecedented rates.
This research proposes the merging of participatory development approaches with
various geospatial and information technologies (GIT) to capture spatial data from development participants: 1) local experts (local stakeholders) and 2) non-local experts (Government, academic and scientific professionals) in real-time into an integrated geospatial database. This process intends to capture participants' objectives and concerns in a landuse allocation format about the rapid transformation of the landscape systems, and to transmit, in a spatially-explicit way, valuable information to policy-makers to better inform their decisions. The method proposes the use of spatial statistical and exploratory spatial methods and techniques to analyze the spatial input by participants to achieve mediation and consensus building through the understanding of the spatial dynamics of their decisions. The research uses the
region of Osa in Costa Rica as empirical site for the testing and development of this method.

This research aims to encourage positive social change and build co-production mechanisms of knowledge for sustainable developments that create opportunities for insightful land use and habitation planning at the landscape level. It also seeks to do so through the development of the participatory process, which builds the capacity of meaningful engagement of all actors of development, thereby strengthening democratic participatory policy and planning development and helping to create plans and options that – because of the collaborative spirit with which they were developed, and the clarity of its outputs to policy makers – can be implemented more easily than plans developed by experts working alone or through traditional participatory approaches.

China is a country experiencing an environmental crisis
of unprecedented magnitude. While the domestic environment situation presents
serious challenges, the transboundary environmental consequences of China's
development patterns present an even more worrisome scenario. While the
country's leadership now recognizes the need to ameliorate domestic
environmental degradation, critics argue it appears less concerned with
harmful impacts on its neighbors. Although China has become increasingly
active in international environmental affairs since 1978, this engagement has
been predominantly focused on domestic enforcement.

The Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS) offers a cogent case
to examine China's transboundary environmental impacts. As the GMS undergoes
tremendous economic development, the region's rich natural resource base faces
certain environmental threats posed by China. Chinese leaders have referred to
the GMS as a common thread joining all riparian nations of the region; yet
civil society organizations assert China does not appear to be interested in
working with other nations if that collaboration stands to jeopardize the
implementation of national development projects, many of which stand to
adversely impact downstream nations.

However, based upon six months of pre-dissertation field
research, I have identified specific scenarios when China positively and
sometimes even proactively engages in transboundary environmental management;
but, I have simultaneously identified situations when it does not. Based upon
my preliminary analysis the key factors that appear to inhibit China's
cross-border eco-jurisdictional cooperation include a state-centric hard law
or binding approach and the failure of transnational civil society to link
with Chinese non-state environmental actors. Whereas the key factors that
appear to promote China's cross-border eco-jurisdictional cooperation
include a state-centric soft law or a non-binding approach and the success of
transnational civil society to effectively network with domestic non-state
environmental actors.

Contradictions among the cases identified, exemplified
by China's constructive engagement in certain circumstances and not in others,
have led me to pose two inter-related research questions: 1) What
institutional arrangements lead China to respond and engage in a positive
manner in some transboundary eco-jurisdictional situations and not in others;
and 2) What role can transnational civil society play in China's transboundary
environmental policy-making process given its growing influence in China and
the GMS?

"Causal
Linkages between Local Development and Local Leadership in the Royal Bafokeng
Nation"J. Andrew Harris, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Government, Harvard
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

This research project follows from survey and observational research
undertaken in the summer of 2004 in the Royal Bafokeng Nation (RBN), a
traditional authority in South Africa. Three compelling results emerged.
First, survey results indicated that participation in the village meetings
(kgotla) declined sharply as incomes and urbanization increased. On one hand,
this result is expected: modernizing forces like education and urbanization
may erode traditional institutions. However, the Bafokeng are exceptional:
their communal lands sit on large platinum deposits, which provide mining
royalties to the Bafokeng. Thus, participation in the kgotla ensures access to
an expanded bundle of public goods and services, valuable to people of all
income levels: educational loans, skill training services, subsidized
utilities, and improved schools, to name a few. Second, interviews revealed
that the role of the local village leader (kgosana) was central in village
life and business, but much variance existed across those surveyed regarding
whether a particular kgosana provided effective leadership. Third, large
standard-of-living differences appeared to exist between villages with similar
geographic and human capital endowments.

The goal of this project is to determine the nature of causal linkages
between local development and local leadership in the RBN. In the project's
initial stage, two goals will be accomplished.
First, through structured interviews with village leaders, profiles
will be created of their understandings of effective
leadership, economic development, and distributive justice. Second, using
interviews with residents and business leaders as well as public records,
the project will isolate the constraints and
inducements shaping economic choices in the villages, as manifest through
leadership choices and the broader institutional environment. This research
will provide empirical evidence on the micro-foundations of development, as
well as contribute to the larger literature on the role of traditional
authorities in governance and development in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Corruption
and Political Horizons"Mario Gamboa-Cavazos, Doctoral Candidate,
Department of Economics, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

This research seeks to understand how politics has an
effect on the incidence of corruption. In particular, the research studies
the roots of corruption from a political economy perspective, and
empirically assesses its determinants in a controlled experimental setting.
Mexico’s recent and geographically uneven transition towards democracy
offers an excellent ground to test political theories of corruption.

Using a proprietary survey on corruption of nearly
4,000 firms across municipalities and states in Mexico, there appears to be
an economically meaningful and statistically significant relation between
political horizons and corruption. Specifically, corruption is U-shaped with
respect to political horizons of state governors. Entrepreneurs doing
business in states where governors have a short or long horizon make larger
extra-official payments relative to entrepreneurs doing business in states
where governors have a medium horizon. Political horizons are unambiguously
defined using the number of years left in office for state governors.

The data also show that monopoly and oligopoly firms
are more sensitive to political horizons than similar competitive firms. In
particular, firms with large market concentrations are more likely to make
large (small) corruption payments when political horizons are long (short).
This result suggests that special interest firms bribe politicians with long
and feasible horizons, but shy away from bribing those with short political
futures. The analysis also seems to indicate that politicians engage in
extorting the private sector when their horizons are sufficiently short.
These patterns are not driven by firm- or state-specific characteristics.
The relationships are also robust to firms’ legitimate business connections
to government.

Overall, this research seeks to contribute to the
design of public policies aimed at curbing corruption in countries
undergoing political transitions. It also has the objective to provide
guidance in the improvement of politicians’ accountability via institutional
mechanisms, such as increased transparency in the public-private dealings
and the strengthening of the judiciary branch of government.

The impact of adverse health events on households’
vulnerability to poverty is not well understood although anecdotal evidence
of the impoverishing effects of these health shocks is abundant. Households
in developing countries, unable to insure their consumption when faced with
major health shocks, end up having to borrow at very high interest rates and
deplete their asses - two major causes of perpetuation of poverty traps.
Disentangling a causal relationship between income and health has proved to
be much more complicated due to issues of reverse causality. One feasible
way to get around this issue of reverse causality would be to identify
health shocks that are random and exogenous.
My research focuses on the following questions in Karnataka, India:
(i)How do
households that face health shocks mitigate the impacts of such shocks? If
there is consumption smoothing, what mechanisms do households rely on to
insure consumption?
(ii)What
sources of financing (informal borrowing, credit markets, savings, depleting
assets) do affected households depend on?
(iii) How do households respond to changes in
household labor supply as a result of the health shock (in terms of changes
in intra-household allocation and labor supply decisions)?
I study random exogenous health shocks by focusing on passengers involved in
bus accidents in Karnataka, India, using data from compensation records of
the State Transport Corporation. Specifically, I focus on individuals who
were passengers in accidents involving state-run buses (who received random
health shocks) and compare them with ‘control’ groups comprising individuals
who have similar travel patterns but were not exposed to the random shock
(.e. were not in an accident).
In addition to providing a unique instrument to study the question of the
health-wealth relationship, road traffic accidents are also a growing burden
of disease that impacts the poor disproportionately, both in developing as
well as developed countries. This proposed research will also serve to
contribute to the understanding of the economic and social consequences of
road traffic accidents.

"How Educational Vouchers
Work: Evidence from Vocational Schools in Colombia"Juan E. Saavedra, Doctoral Candidate in Public Policy,
Kennedy School of Government

This project uses data from a Colombian program in which
school vouchers were randomly assigned through a lottery to shed light on the
mechanisms by which voucher programs affect educational outcomes. The
Colombian government issued private school vouchers - PACES - for students
entering secondary school. The vouchers targeted the poorest third of the
population and were renewable so long as the recipient made adequate progress
towards secondary school graduation. Previous results suggest that, in
general, voucher winners had higher academic achievement through the end of
secondary school. The voucher, however, could have improved student outcomes
for a variety of reasons. It could have been an income shock. The voucher
could have strengthened the incentives for students to work hard. The voucher
could have also changed students' peer characteristics and quality of school
attended.

To explore some of the possible mechanisms, we analyze
the effects of vouchers on students who applied to vocational schools. Among
applicants to vocational schools, the voucher seemed to have odd effects on
the type of schools that students attended. Voucher winners used their voucher
to attend vocational schools. Voucher lottery losers, by contrast, switched to
academic schools. Three years into the program, voucher winners were 18
percentage points more likely to be attending a vocational school, and as a
result, they were more likely to attend schools of inferior quality as
measured by academic performance on the ICFES - a college entry exam. In this
stage, we will survey approximately 300 schools in Bogotà.
The proposed data collection would gather additional characteristics of the
schools that voucher applicants attended and further help us test whether
voucher winners, despite being academically successful, truly went to inferior
schools.

"The
Impact of Strengthening Land Rights on Access to Credit: Evidence from a
Large-Scale Land Titling Project in India"Philipp Schnabl, Doctoral Candidate, Department
of Economics

A large literature has documented extensive credit
rationing in developing countries. Low-income rural households in particular
are frequently excluded from formal credit markets because they are unable
to provide proper collateral. This inability is often due to a lack of
formal property titles, rather than the lack of underlying assets. In fact,
many rural households own substantial property, primarily land, but are
denied credit because they fail to provide the formal documentation to
certify their ownership. In short, access to credit is seriously hampered by
an absence of functioning institutions to ensure the proper issuance,
verification, and enforcement of land titles.

The main objective of this research project is to
evaluate the effect of improving land tenure and titling institutions on
access to credit. Specifically, this project will focus on a large-scale
policy intervention to computerize land records in rural Karnataka, India.
This computerization strengthened land rights by reducing corruption and
improving accuracy and reliability of formal land titles. A recent survey
indicates that the computerization significantly raised access to credit
among landowners.

Empirically, the setting is ideal for identifying
the effect of strengthened land titles on credit because the computerization
was introduced in a staggered fashion across districts. The cross-district
and time variation in the program introduction allows the use of a
differences-in-differences estimation strategy. The main advantage of this
strategy is to take out time and regional effects that could easily confound
such an analysis.

Overall, this research project aims to contribute
to the growing literature on the effects of land titling and, more
generally, the microeconomics of property rights. Specifically, this study
aims to go beyond the simple statement that property rights matter and
explore the mechanisms and institutions that mediate the effect of property
rights on economic outcomes. This topic has been discussed extensively among
both academics and policymakers, and the goal of this research project is to
provide findings that are relevant to both groups.

"Men at War: Do Countries with More Men Experience More Conflict?" Emily Oster, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Economics

This project seeks to understand whether excess men relative to women make
a nation more likely to experience conflict. Statistically, men are more
likely to commit crimes and engage in other forms of violence. This paper
addresses the issue of whether having more men can also lead to more
collective violence - revolutions, civil wars and internal disturbances more
generally. I take advantage of variations across countries in sex ratio at
birth to avoid selection problems. The project will explore the effect of
excess men on both historical and contemporary conflicts. In addition to
helping us understand the effect of demographics on war, this paper has
important policy implications. It is clear that the demographic makeup of some
developing countries - India, for example - is shifting towards men. If more
men relative to women lead to more conflict, then there are real additional
concerns about these gender shifts. Although others have suggested this issue,
there remains no good empirical evidence that men and conflict are related. I
hope to overcome that empirical deficit with this project.

This research will contribute to academic knowledge-building with relevance
to decentralization, local governance, institutional reform, and
democratization. In addition, practitioners who are involved in helping
stimulate better performance among local governments will find it of use. The
project is to result in a book manuscript, articles, seminar and workshop
presentations, and contributions to development assistance agencies on reform
and innovation in local governance. The project has been funded by the Ash
Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation, the David Rockefeller
Center for Latin American Studies, and the Center for International
Development.

Rural women’s
land rights are particularly important for China
given that women in the countryside currently contribute more toagricultural production in China than ever before. According tosome surveys, women account for 60% to 70% of all farm labor, asrural men have swarmed to cities and towns for jobs. Rural women
are not only working in the fields, but also looking after theelderly and children at home. However, rural women are veryvulnerable to losing their land when they leave their nativevillages after marriages and move to their husband’s villages.Previously, women could receive land at their husband’s villagein the initial land readjustment. In 2002, a significant piece oflegislation- Rural Land Contracting Laws - was adopted. For thefirst time in any laws or policies regarding rural land, women’srights to land were specifically addressed. Under the new laws,women would not be entitled to land at their husband’s villagesthrough land readjustment. However, they can still retainproportionate land rights in their original households, whichwould not be given away when they marries, till they receives
land in their husband’s villages through either uncultivatedwasteland or reserved land for additional population, ifavailable.

Even though
the new land laws is meant to protect rural women’sland rights, the implementation represents formidable challenges.More and more women are deprived of their rights to land becauseof changes in marital status. In particular, local social
customsseem to have determinative effects in
preventing theimplementation and enforcement of
the new laws. In opposition tothe local customs,
some rural women resorted to legal means to
protect their land rights. There are many interesting questionsworthy of exploration. For instance, how rural women become awareof their land rights, through what channels, and how much or whatthey know about their rights; in defense of their land
rights,what means they resort to and why they
choose certain means asopposed to others, and how
effective they are; what are localvillagers’
attitudes towards local customs that are hostile torural women’s legal rights, and to what extent they perceive themas just or unjust, etc. Theoretically, I am particularlyinterested in the dynamics between informal rules/social normsand formal rules and laws.

My research focuses on the behavior of developing
economy firms (DEFs). Very little is understood about their nature,
management, decision-making rationale or the forces driving them towards
efficient (or inefficient) operation. DEFs operate in economies that are
characterized by high costs of information and high levels of political risk
which result in increased transaction costs. My research focuses on how DEFs
adapt to high information costs and political risk. In the preliminary phase
of my research I measured DEF response to high information costs in the market
for managers. Initial results showed that DEFs have formed alternative
mechanisms allowing them to verify managerial reputations and firm
performance. These results contradict popular assumptions that in
less-developed markets, managerial reputations are unable to form due to the
small market size and absence of others such as vibrant take-over markets. In
fact I found that managerial reputation is a large determinant of a manager's
future employment capacity. The subsequent phase of my research will focus on
the nature and efficacy of these alternative mechanisms.

I found DEFs' adaptation to high levels of political
risk to creation of incentives through the use of political godfathers or
business pacts with politicians. Here there are differences between Kenya and
South Africa regarding the nature and structure of these incentives. My
subsequent research will focus on the interrelationship between capital and
politics in the absence of actual politically connected personnel in firm
management. I will be searching for more specific evidence of how the
political relationship translates into economic gain and what insurance
mechanisms firm use to insure against political fall-outs.

"Assessing
Medical Insurance in China"Nicole Szlezák, Doctoral Candidate in Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government

In 1998, China introduced a major nation-wide reform to urban health care.
The reform was targeted to urban employees and aimed to establish a uniform
basic insurance system across cities, based on key features such as compulsory
city-level risk pooling and individual medical accounts. In the program, local
governments retain considerable leeway in managing important features such as
pooling and managing of funds and the adjustment of contribution levels. To
date, the degree of implementation of this national reform varies across
Chinese cities, and little is known about its impacts on such variables as
health care expenditure and health outcomes of employees or on expenditures of
insurance funds.

This research project aims to take a first cut at assessing how national
medical insurance policy is implemented in urban areas in China. The study
will be based on data from 4 different
representative regions in China. Its focus will be twofold. First, it will
seek to evaluate the effect of different payment schemes on health care
expenditure and health outcomes of enrollees. Second, it will to study
risk-management in social medical insurance funds and to project future
expected expenditures of such funds.

This ethnographic research project will examine the
Environmental Action Program (EAP), an environmental education program being
implemented by a non-governmental organization (NGO) in rural Gansu Province
since 2001. The EAP educates Chinese women farmers and encourages them to
share sustainable agricultural knowledge and practices with fellow villagers.
Much of China’s environmental degradation is due to unsustainable agricultural
practices, and rural Chinese women are doing an increasing share of
agricultural work. Worldwide, feminists and development agencies are calling
more attention to women’s crucial but previously overlooked role in
environmental protection. The EAP offers a unique opportunity to investigate
an education program that combines gender and environmental objectives in a
rural Chinese setting. The focus of this research project will be on
understanding the cultural linkages between gender, environmental practice and
knowledge, and education in this particular rural setting.

To date, little research has examined the relationship between culture and
the environment in China; less has examined how this relationship may be
gendered. Likewise, research on environmental education in China has mainly
examined environmental education among school children in urban, formal
schools. Environmental education for adults and environmental education in
rural areas remains unexamined. This research project will fill a gap in the
literature and further our understanding of people’s cultural understandings
of education, the environment, and gender by shedding light on the cultural
meanings and value-laden assumptions behind the EAP women’s efforts for
international and national sustainable development policy, environmental
education policy, women’s and girls’ education policy, and international
development practice.

"Contraceptive
Behaviors of Young Women in Mexico: An Analysis of the Oportunidades Program"Becca Feldman, Doctoral Candidate, Department of
Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health

Despite a substantial increase in adolescent reproductive health
interventions (ARHIs) globally during the past two decades, these
interventions have not been effective in reducing the adverse consequences of
sexual risk behaviors. Findings across countries indicate that traditional
risk-reduction approaches have successfully influenced young people’s
knowledge and attitudes but have not consistently resulted in sustained
changes in behavior. Data generated from the on-going evaluation of
Oportunidades, Mexico’s largest anti-poverty program, present an
opportunity to test a substantially different approach to adolescent
reproductive health programs. This social development program gives female
heads-of-households cash transfers conditional on their children’s regular
school attendance and health clinic visits. While Oportunidades was
originally designed to improve the health of mothers and their children, I
will analyze whether the program modifies contraceptive use and the ensuing
fertility levels of its young female beneficiaries through program mechanisms
that alleviate poverty and simultaneously increase their autonomy.

It is my hope that this research can provide results that will prompt the
re-conceptualization of ARHIs, moving them away from solely risk-reduction
approaches to focus on structural approaches. Findings generated from this
research will highlight the importance of an approach that can effectively
influence young women’s autonomy and contraceptive behaviors by altering their
environments. The findings also carry broad policy and development
implications for advancing knowledge in the programming of sexual health
interventions for young people in Latin American and the Caribbean where
similar large-scale anti-poverty programs are emerging. Furthermore, the
research has the potential to provide more definitive evidence about young
women’s contraceptive behaviors so that we can more skillfully inform
researchers, program planners, and policy-makers about programs that increase
young women’s autonomy and help them achieve their expressed fertility
preferences and improved reproductive health.

"Does
School Quality Matter? Evidence from a Randomized School Choice Experiment in
Beijing"Wei Ha, Doctoral Candidate in Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government

Does school quality matter? Do school resources such as higher per student
expenditure, smaller class size, and better teachers improve students’
performance? The answer seems self-evident but there has been an ongoing
debate among economists about whether school quality is what really counts.
Traditional estimates of the return to education employ observational data
which limits any attempt to disentangle the causal effect of school resources
from other confounding factors such as family background and students’ innate
ability. Recent studies tend to focus on using experimental data where
students are randomly assigned to schools or classes with different resources
and help to overcome the confounding problem and identify the true effects of
education inputs.

In 1998, the middle school admission test was
abolished in Beijing due to the concern that the middle school admission exam
had put so much pressure and burden on students at such a young age that it
did more harm than good to their physical and intellectual development. A
computerized lottery was introduced as an innovative way to allocate students
to schools of different quality with the hope that it would safeguard against
any misconduct or favoritism in the admission process. Thisstudy will explore the effect of this unique school choice program in
one of Beijing’s wealthiest districts where students are randomly assigned to
middle schools of different quality based on their lottery number.
The hope is that this
study will broaden the knowledge base of return to human capital investment in
China, help the financially-stringent Chinese government set their funding
priority among important policy issues, and also shed light on the potential
implications of such a school choice program on social segregation as well as
intergenerational mobility in the rapidly growing Chinese economy.

"The Effects of Counterfeits
on Market Prices, Innovations, and Social Welfare" Yi Qian, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Economics

Counterfeit goods, characterized by infringement of Intellectual Property
Rights (IPR) and usually of inferior quality with respect to the original
good, are generally considered to reduce incentives for innovation and to
lower the status of original goods. Since the 1980s, intellectual property
protection has become much more extensive as countries at various stages of
development begin to implement or extend their national patent rights. The
impact of IPR protection and counterfeiting remains an important policy
question -- one that is especially pertinent for developing countries.

The aim of this project is to analyze the impacts of counterfeits on the
original producers’ pricing discrimination strategies and innovation
responses, the equilibrium market prices, and social welfares. The main
contribution of this project is that it incorporates the counterfeits' effects
in two instrumental parameters -- the quality correlation coefficients between
the counterfeits and the original products for the high- and low- income
consumers. It can therefore better explain the consumer and producer reactions
after the entrance of counterfeits. This project is also the first to obtain
empirical data on counterfeits and test the theoretical predictions using
advanced empirical methodologies in the economics of IPR and technology.

"Governance à la Carte: The Politics of Privatization
in Sub-Saharan Africa"Sandra Sequeira, Doctoral Candidate in Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government

Since the 1990s, privatization has touched nearly every African country.
Theforceful role of International Financial
Institutions (IFIs) and foreign donorshas in most
cases determined the initiation of this reform, as part of astandardized agenda that aimed at radically restructuring African
economies toenable long-term growth. However,
despite the uniformity of the policy
recommendations, these privatization schemes have differed in design,
strategy,pace and scope. A full range of
privatization techniques have beenadopted, withschemes differing in the level of investment responsibility, the degree
ofaffirmative action to ensure domestic private
sector participation, therelative irreversibility
of the privatization transaction and the degree of
risk transferred to the private sector.

This research project explores whether variation in the strategy and
methods ofprivatization of competitive industries
can be explained by differences inpolitical
institutions across Sub-Saharan African countries. It covers 41 Sub-Saharan
African countries, with two in-depth case studies of Mozambique andKenya. The goal is to further our understanding of the political
economy ofinstitutions in Sub Saharan Africa, with
particular emphasis on the complexrelationship
between the state and the economy.

"The
Household Decision to Care for an Orphan in South Africa: Does AIDS Matter?"Iris Boutros, Doctoral Candidate, Department of
Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health

That the global HIV/AIDS pandemic is a major challenge to
development is uncontestable. The more obvious devastating effect of the
pandemic is the hollowing of a population’s working-age adults. However, adult
mortality due to AIDS is causing punctuated changes in the magnitude and types
of orphans left behind in high HIV burden countries, such as South Africa. The
number of children orphaned due to AIDS jeopardizes human capital accumulation
of the next generation. Moreover, due to the nature of transmission, many
children are likely to become parentless, which creates a more significant
responsibility for the child’s community and the state.

To date, claims have tended to assume negative consequences of a fostering
relationship on the child and the household caring for the child. However,
theoretically, the effect could be ambiguous. While the addition of a child to
the household does create additional expenditures, the child provides labor
that may offset the additional expenditures. It is pertinent to understand
under which circumstances the fostering relationship presents the greatest
risk to the well-being of the child and the fostering household in order to
design policies and interventions that adequately support this population. By
characterizing households that care for an orphan and the potentially
differential decision to care for a child orphaned due to AIDS, this study
will contribute to the newly forming base of evidence on the effects of
orphanhood. Moreover, the data used will allow the exploration of key
influences on well-being, such as the mobility of the child, as well as the
timing and cause of parental death. This study will provide a more precise
exploration of the relative influences on the household’s decision to foster a
child. Being able to disentangle the effects of different influences can aid
in the creation of effective interventions that may reverse some of the
development set-backs felt by countries with an extensive “orphan crisis” such
as South Africa.

"Information,
Elections, and Decentralization in East Africa"J. Andrew Harris, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Government, Harvard
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Over the past decade, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania have
enacted various forms of fiscal and political decentralization. In theory,
the aim of these reforms was to enhance the efficiency and accountability of
local government. In practice, central governments observed wide variation
in the effects of their policies. In some localities, improved service
provision, poverty alleviation, and transparency led to economic growth. In
others, the capture of government resources by local elites was the norm,
leading to greater inequality and lower levels of growth and accountability.
What explains this variation in outcomes? The purpose of this
pre-dissertation research is to exploit the arbitrary nature of African
boundaries to understand how the formal institutions of decentralization
interact with the informal cultural institutions of ethnic groups straddling
those borders. In building a better understanding of the local political
economy of development in East Africa, this project recognizes that
government performance may be conditioned through democratic elections in at
least two ways. First, voters may punish incumbents for poor performance
only if those voters have information regarding reasonable expectations for
performance -- a yardstick. Second, incumbents can only credibly be
threatened if there are candidates capable of defeating them. However, each
of these accountability mechanisms is conditioned by how information is
shared, which is in turn a function of the formal institutions and the
social organization of a group. By comparing bisected ethnic groups facing
different decentralization policies and different ethnic groups facing
identical decentralization policies, this project will begin to untangle the
behavioral implications of ethnicity in diverse institutional contexts.

The transnational
Education for All (EFA) initiative strongly advocates civic participation
for achieving universal access to education. While there is growing literature
on roles of civil society organizations (CSOs) leading educational expansion
in developing countries, international education policy research has largely
ignored low-income women's collective civic action in education in
underprivileged settings. In the Indian context, for instance, such women are
participating in thousands as grassroots educators with CSOs and are acting as
foundations for educational change in their own communities. Examining the
nature of these women's community-based participation is critical to gain
insights into how initiatives in educational expansion develop and may be
further strengthened.

This ethnographic research examines low-income women's participation as
literacy educators in a large, impoverished slum community in Mumbai, India.
The women work with a CSO, which is engaged in the EFA initiative in India.
This study will shed light on the cultural and gendered processes of
participation in India's educational expansion. It will also bring
perspectives from the grassroots in conversation assumptions, gaps, and
affirmative aspects in broader educational policy, and will seek to inform
programs for educational change in underprivileged settings.

Over recent years, research in economics has stressed the importance of
institutions in explaining per capita income differences across countries.
Uncertainty remains, however, about how externally imposed institutional
changes impact economic development within countries in the short term.
Our
research proposes exploiting variation in the implementation of the National
Solidarity Programme (NSP), a village-level democratization program in
Afghanistan, to draw inference over the interrelationships between
democratization, institutional outputs, and economic development.
Administered by the Afghan government and funded by a consortium of
international donors, the NSP mandates the election of Community Development
Councils (CDCs) in each of Afghanistan’s 20,000 villages and provides
funding to support development plans devised by CDCs. As the program is
being implemented progressively over a four year period, we hope to examine,
through the application of difference-in-difference or propensity score
matching techniques, the conditional correlation between variation in NSP
program implementation and variation in institutional outputs and economic
development outcomes in Afghan villages.

"The
Nature of Parental Involvement in Children's Schooling in a Poor Rural
Province in Northwestern China"Peggy Kong, Doctoral Candidate, Harvard Graduate School
of Education

Parental willingness and ability to support their children’s education
are important because research indicates that, when parents are involved
more fully, their children tend to enjoy greater educational success and
engagement. Much of the existing research on parental involvement is
grounded in the U.S. and other industrialized nations, and may or may not
transfer to other cultural settings, or to rural settings in the developing
world. In Chinese cultural settings, most existing research has focused on
the urban mainland or Taiwan, and there has been little exploration of
parental involvement in rural areas where the majority of mainland China’s
children reside.

In my study, I address these gaps by investigating the nature of parental
involvement in children’s schooling in a poor rural province in northwestern
China. By using both quantitative analyses and ethnographic methods, I
examine the theoretical relationship between parental involvement in their
children’s education and important family background and school
characteristics. By focusing my study on parental involvement in their
children’s schooling in rural China, results from my study offer new insight
into parental involvement in a context that has received little attention.
My findings have practical implications for informing policy in China,
because China is currently implementing a new round of curriculum reforms
that emphasizes the importance of a collaborative relationship between
families and schools for student outcomes. As a new study of parental
involvement in a less-developed setting, my work will contribute to the task
of rethinking concepts of parental involvement in ways that better suit the
kinds of rural settings where many of the developing world’s children are
educated.

"Payments
for Ecosystem Services: Efficiency, Equity and
Environment Outcomes in Southeast Asia"
Kelsey Jack, Doctoral Candidate in Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government

This research project focuses on how institutions shape
the efficacy and equity of initiatives that promote payments for environmental
services. Humans depend on natural ecosystems for such diverse functions as
water purification, climate regulation, crop pollination, and flood and
erosion control. However, most of the benefits derived from ecosystems are
enjoyed for free – as positive externalities. Because of this market failure,
ecosystems are often overexploited and become degraded, at which point, the
value of ecosystem services is felt. Traditionally, loss of ecosystem
services has been met with command and control regulation and built
infrastructure. Recently, a new approach attempts to correct market failure
through payments for ecosystem services (PES). In diverse locations around
the world PES initiatives are exploring the ways in which the communities
whose land use practices determine the flow of benefits can be compensated for
adopting practices that conserve ecosystem services. Current understanding of
the relationship between initiative design and outcomes, particularly the
equity of outcomes, is limited.

This research will focus on a PES initiative currently
underway in Asia. The World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) is piloting an
initiative to reward upland poor for managing landscapes in ways that sustain
the provision of ecosystem services to outsiders (RUPES). Taking an
explicitly pro-poor approach to PES, the initiative provides compensation
through land tenure and development assistance, in contrast to the financial
payments approach typically employed by PES initiatives. By studying the
environment, equity and efficiency outcomes of RUPES, this research seeks to
bring together theory and practice through a case study of the relationship
between PES design and outcomes. This study is part of an
ongoing project to
look at the institutional design of payments for ecosystem services conducted
by the Science, Environment and Development Group, within CID.

"The Political Economy of the District Assembly Common Fund in
Ghana" Afua Branoah Banful, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Economics

An extensive literature in fiscal federalism has shown that funding and production of local public goods is most efficiently achieved by decentralized arms of government responsible for the population that benefit most from the good. Along with the wave of democratization of several developing countries in the latter part of the twentieth century, there was legislation that apparently created decentralized local governing structures in these countries.

The political players in the democracies were however very cognizant that true decentralization of public good production would essentially reduce the power and influence of the central government. Politicians’ campaign platforms consist almost solely of their past ability to provide public goods and promises of goods to be provided in the future. By severing the direct link between the central political players and public good production, the electorate would no longer respond to such national political platforms. In addition, local governing bodies were viewed as threats to political consolidation because they provided environments where individuals could gain political support and gradually rise to national recognition. Also, through voting for local representation the electorate would improve their civic education and come to appreciate their responsibility and power in a democracy. The young democracies recognized that improved efficiency of local public good production had to be traded off with ceding the main influence of the central political players on the electorate. Many first administrations were necessitated to establish structures of local government which apparently decentralized power but allowed central government ways of directly influencing the electorate.

My research examines the experience of Ghana which in 1957 became the first African country to gain independence from its colonial rulers. I study the structure of Ghana’s local government and identify ways in which political economy may effectively reduce the efficiency of public good production and the welfare of the people. Specifically, I investigate how the political players and the central government exert political influence over the populace by rewarding or punishing the electorate through the disbursement of a central fund intended for local public good production.

The first Ghanaian administration was led by a socialist, Dr Kwame Nkrumah. To maintain power and achieve his vision, his administration actively pursued policies to ensure that all political power was in the hands of a few trusted party loyals. He outlawed all political activity and formed a one party state. Importantly, he dismantled all local councils, effectively strengthening and centralizing influence on the populace by becoming the sole provider of much needed public amenities. His government was overthrown in a military coup in 1966 and Nkrumah exiled. This set a precedent for a tumultuous political environment that saw eight military coups d’etats in a period of less than twenty years. The last coup occurred on 31st December 1981, led by Flight lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings. In 1987, a law by Rawlings’ military regime established District Assemblies as institutions of local government in Ghana. Then, as is presently, there was no income tax system and almost all other tax revenue was paid directly to the central government. Charged with new roles of administration and production of public goods at the local level, it was obvious that District Assemblies would need more funds than they were able to raise at the local level. The new local bodies were given a mandate without the ability to exert it. In 1992, a new Ghanaian constitution that set up a District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) was approved. The fund was to be administered quarterly at the national level by a Fund Administrator which disbursed funds to the various District Assemblies based on a ‘formula’ decided by parliament each year.

It is apparent that District Assemblies are only in theory the highest units of local government. The Assemblies rely almost solely on funds from the DACF, which must approve and monitor all projects that are undertaken. There is plenty of room for central government to influence which areas and segments of the population are supplied with public goods. In addition to their crippling reliance on directed financial support from the central government, the structure of the district assemblies creates innate tension that requires them to reach out to the central government to maintain harmony amongst its members. Some members are elected locally and report to the local electorate, while others are appointed by the central government and act in the interest of the ruling political party. My project studies the pattern of disbursement of funds from the DACF to all the districts and investigates whether and how political influence interacts with the efficiency of public good production in the country. My results may reveal crucial policy recommendations for improved efficiency of much needed public amenities in developing countries.

"Sexuality and its
Relationship to HIV Transmission in Post-Conflict Societies: The Case of
Sierra Leone" Adia Benton, Doctoral Candidate, Department of
Anthropology

As government agencies and non-governmental organizations assist Sierra
Leoneans in their efforts to reintegrate into their communities, they face the
challenge of remediating the psychological, political and economic effects of
a decade-long conflict that killed 75,000 people and displaced as many as two
million. Among the concerns of these organizations is the re-establishment of
livelihoods through the rehabilitation of schools, health facilities and
agricultural capacity, and the delivery of community health education. Little
studied – though increasingly addressed through post-conflict development
projects – is HIV/AIDS and the dynamics of its transmission in the general
population.

A recent review of HIV/AIDS research among conflict-affected populations
has suggested that prolonged conflict in Sierra Leone – and the constraints it
placed on mobility – might have slowed the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country.
As thousands of people return to their homes and expand their social networks
and interactions, the examination of factors that might have changed (and
continue to change), including sexual behaviors,
attitudes and norms, is significant. This
preliminary study seeks to describe and understand how men and women in Sierra
Leone perceive, experience and enact sexuality as they face the challenge of
rebuilding their lives in the post-conflict period. One of the hypotheses
being explored in this study is that conflict disorients and destabilizes
individuals’ lives in ways that profoundly affect how they express and enact
sexuality (e.g., how sexual partners are selected,
suitability of certain sexual partners, the meanings and significances of
sexual intercourse itself, etc.).

The little research that has focused on HIV/AIDS in Sierra Leone has been
based primarily on knowledge, attitudes and practices surveys, which fail to
elaborate the broader contexts in which "risky" sexual behavior occurs. The
utility of such behaviorist paradigms for HIV/AIDS prevention and research has
been widely contested, since most sexual encounters – and even interventions
themselves - almost never function at the level of behavior but rather at
interpersonal and social levels. Thus, this research is intended to fill gaps
in the literature on sexuality and its relationship to HIV transmission in
post-conflict societies, and in Sierra Leone in particular. In addition to
filling gaps in the literature, the findings from this research will be
particularly useful for organizations that are interested in developing more
comprehensive, culturally sound HIV/AIDS prevention programs in this and other
settings.

This project intends to
implement a randomized experiment in order to evaluate the impact of
subsidized, easy credit access for the poor in Vietnam.

The subsidized credit project is part of the general poverty reduction
program sponsored and administered by the Vietnamese government during the
period 2006-2010. The poor, defined by a threshold on income, is entitled to a
reasonable loan at a subsidized rate from a special government bank dedicated
for the poor. In reality, the disbursement process is quite slow, and each
year usually only about half of the fund is available for the poor borrowers
on time. The project will use this rationing to
randomly select a set of loan appliers to receive the loans in the first
phase, and the remaining appliers in the second phase. This selection will be
used as an instrumental variable for the estimation of the impact of easy
access and subsidized credit on income and consumption of the poor. We further
vary the access and the subsidy across the sample to measure the impact of
easy access without subsidy.

The design of the experiment will be carried out during the second half of
2005 and the first half of 2006. The program will run for 4 years, and
information on the outcome of subsidized loans will be collected by 2009,
which is thought as sufficient for any impact to be carried out.

"The Transition from
Relief to Development: A Case Study for the American Refugee Committee (ARC)
in Uganda" Suzanna Chapman, Doctoral Candidate, Department
of Government

There is currently a new operation being launched in Uganda by the
American Refugee Committee (ARC).
By way of background, the ARC is a non-governmental organization that has been
operating in Sudan for over ten years and has just begun to expand its
operations to Uganda. Through my discussions with the Director of ARC Field
Operations in Uganda, I have learned of the need to expand the nature of their
operations from what is typically a humanitarian relief operation to include
development assistance for internally displaced persons within Uganda. The
Director of Field Operations for ARC Uganda has agreed to a research
collaboration in which I would help to explore how best to bring in
developmental components. I hope not only to
contribute to an effective transition of ARC field operations, but also to
contribute to the scholarly literature on the subject of transition.

Within the literature a divide persists between analyzing the roles of NGOs
in providing humanitarian aid versus development assistance, a division often
reflected in the field among NGOs and donors with distinct missions. Within
each of these fields, there is a growing literature on assessment methods,
shared strategies, and increased understanding of current obstacles. However,
there has been little focus on how individual organizations can transition
their efforts from a humanitarian paradigm to a development paradigm in order
to meet the shifting needs in the region in which they operate. The current
expansion of ARC relief efforts in Uganda provides a unique opportunity to
investigate the challenges of planning and implementing a major change in
field operations, while maintaining a locally-based operational structure. The
goal of this casestudy will be to draw lessons from
the experience of ARC Uganda that may benefit other NGOs in transition.

"Violence
in Chicago and Medellín: A Cross-city Comparison of Neighborhood Influences on
Violence"Magdalena Cerda, Doctoral Candidate, Department of
Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health

Interpersonal violence constitutes a significant global public health
concern: in 2000, an estimated 520,000 people died from homicide. The vast
majority of these deaths occurred in low-to-middle-income countries: only 10%
occurred in high-income countries. Young people bear the highest burden from
violence: the highest rates of homicide in the world are found among males
aged 15-29 years of age. Homicide and non-fatal assaults that involve young
people contribute significantly to the global burden of death, injury and
disability. Youth violence also adds greatly to the cost of health and welfare
services, reduces national productivity, decreases the value of property and
disrupts essential services. The World Health Organization has called for
investment in cross-national research on the societal-level correlates of
violence.

Research has shown that the neighborhood environment can impact the
probability that youth become exposed to violence and develop violent patterns
of behavior. Yet limited information is available about the processes through
which community characteristics have an impact on the violent behavior of
youth in developing countries. The aim of the proposed research is to compare
the multiplicative influences of neighborhood collective efficacy and material
disadvantage on youth violence in different national contexts. This
cross-national study will take place in Medellín, Colombia and Chicago,
Illinois, United States. It will use a cross-sectional subsample of 1,500
children and adolescents, aged 12-18, from the Project on Human Development in
Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), a 6-year prospective study of determinants of
youth externalizing problem behaviors, as well as a subsample of 916
adolescents aged 12-24 from a cross-sectional household survey of
perpetrators, victims and witnesses of violence in Medellín, Colombia. A
cross-cultural comparison may allow us to better understand the circumstances
under which the social environment in the neighborhood may protect neighbors
from the proliferation of youth violence in those countries that face the
highest burden thereof. Such a study presents a priority from the perspective
of intervention design, as the need exists to understand the nature of the
associations between social processes and violence in low-resource contexts in
order to identify effective preventive interventions.

"Young Lives:
Household Diversification and Child Well-Being in Vietnam"
Ngoc Anh Tran, Doctoral Candidate in Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government

Young Lives is an ongoing international research project that is recording
changes in child poverty over 15 years (2001-2016). This study is innovative
in its comprehensive approach to child poverty and its potential to provide an
assessment of impact of various policies on child well-being. In Vietnam, the
survey round 1 was conducted in June – December 2002.

With the support from CID and Save the Children UK, I will study the
relationship between income, its sources and diversification, and child
well-being, as a part of the Young Lives Project in Vietnam. One of the
research questions is to test whether income is the only channel through which
diversification affects child well-being. If it is,
does diversification affect negatively (through labor stressing and income
scarification) or positively (through income smoothing and improvement)? This
research would have implications to current policy that encourages the poor to
diversify their income. This research will also be the first of a series on
child poverty using the Young Lives datasets.